A bald bloke with a fear of heights, a panda with a mobile phone. Forget centuries of British greatness - look what we put on a pedestal today

What a gloriously British scene this was. Here we had the great and the good of the art world scratching their designer stubble and offering haughty pronouncements along the lines of: 'Is it art?'

Here was an entire battalion of quangocrats, public relations people and bouncers, roping off half of Trafalgar Square for the grand unveiling of Britain's latest national statue in

front of 200 media folk, 40 international TV crews and the Mayor of London.

And then an angry middle-aged man in a purple T-shirt suddenly tore up the script. Unlike everyone else, Stuart Holmes had not come to yesterday's launch of One & Other - an hourly succession of 2,400 living sculptures on Trafalgar Square's empty fourth plinth - to explore the inner-meaning of who and what we are. He had come to cause a scene.

Performers: Victor Martinez poured tea, Steve Platt attempted to get a few laughs and Jill Gatcum released balloons on the fourth plinth

As the world waited to see Rachel Wardell, an East Midlands housewife, become the first living person to join Admiral Nelson on a Trafalgar Square pedestal, Mr Holmes decided to jump the gun ten minutes early.

While the VIPs assembled, he dodged a security oaf who was too busy picking arguments with the Press, shot through the VIP pen, jumped on a balustrade and threw himself at the safety netting surrounding the top of the plinth (it's supposed to stop people jumping off, not on).

Once on top, Mr Holmes unfurled a banner about the tobacco industry. But it was not brute force which brought him down. It was a simple appeal for him to do the decent thing.

'I hope you'll have the grace to give up your place,' pleaded Antony Gormley, the creator of One & Other, through the loudspeakers. 'Give me a microphone!' Mr Holmes yelled back.

'You should have brought your own,' said Mr Gormley, politely explaining that all 2,400 future occupants of the plinth are responsible for bringing their own equipment. 'I hope you'll do the gentlemanly thing,' he went on, explaining that a lot of people were waiting for their moment on the plinth.

And as a large cherry-picker truck
arrived with Rachel Wardell held aloft in its bucket for her designated
9am start, Mr Holmes duly did the decent thing, vacated the plinth and
climbed into the bucket. A very proper round of applause ensued. And
once Mr Holmes had been lowered to the ground, he was allowed to go on
his way.

If Mr Gormley's
intention had been to illustrate that a deep-rooted sense of fair play
still lurks somewhere in the British psyche, then he could not have
done a better job.

However, I suspect that his latest idea might also, in due course, bring

forth another trait in
the national character - our time-honoured love of putting people on
pedestals and then chucking things at them.

The idea is very
simple. After years of arguments over who or what should occupy the
vacant fourth plinth in Trafalgar Square (the other three plinths prop
up George IV plus Sir Charles Napier and Major-General Sir Henry
Havelock - key figures in maintaining British power in India in the
19th century - while Nelson stands supreme in the middle), the empty
space is now granted to a different artist every year or so.

Antony Gormley, creator
of the Angel Of The North among much else, is the latest creative
tenant. And it is his idea to place ordinary living people on a
pedestal in a square otherwise devoted to dead national heroes.

Standing tall and proud: Scott Illman and his bell, Stuart Holmes making a protest and lollipop lady Rachel Wardell

Every hour, day and night, for 100 days, a British citizen over the age of 16 will spend 60 minutes on top of the 25ft high plinth. He or she can do or say anything (legal) or nothing at all. All 2,400 'plinthers' can bring anything with them, as long as they carry it.

Anyone can apply via the website oneandother.co.uk and a computer picks out names at random.

So far, 16,000 have signed up. The only filter is by postcode to ensure an even national spread. 'If you're from London, you've got a one-in-200 chance,' says Gormley. 'If you're from Scotland it's one in two and Northern Ireland - well, you're almost certain.'

Every month, the computer throws up 615 names for the month ahead and every person is allocated an hour. If they don't like the time - say, 4am on a Monday morning - it's tough luck and they get thrown back in the lottery. But almost everyone accepts.

'Part of you is very excited and part of you is filled with abject terror,' said Jill Gatcum, 51, a London IT consultant who was third-in-line for the plinth yesterday morning and spent her 60 minutes releasing helium balloons for charity.

It's certainly a tourist attraction.

But is it art? Is it any more artistic than, say, the five volunteers who spent several days living in a cage at London Zoo in 2005?

Are these people any different from David Blaine, the American showman, who spent 44 days of 2003 in a glass box suspended from a crane next to Tower Bridge?

'Of course it's art,' said Boris Johnson, Mayor of London, bubbling with admiration for the latest artistic flower in his cultural garden.

He was actually rubbing his hands as Mr Holmes threw the opening ceremony into disarray - 'This is fantastic! This is what's art is all about!' - and he urged everyone to get involved: 'We may have lost the People's Princess,' he declared, 'but we have the People's Plinth.'

Warming to his theme, he added: 'Some day, your plinth will come.'

Mr Johnson, who has allocated £140,000 of Londoners' money to this project, found himself besieged by film crews for a full hour; deploying his best French for an existential debate with a Paris film crew one minute, quoting Gray's Elegy to Americans and Spaniards the next.

Gesturing across to the Romanstyle statue of General Napier, he asked: 'Do these toga'd buffoons cast in bronze around Trafalgar Square deserve any more celebration than this person up there? This is the question.'

Aware that he was in danger of being carried away by his inner luvvie, he concluded his last interview with 'This is Boris Johnson, Pseuds Corner, Trafalgar Square' and hopped on his bike.

Mr Gormley was still holding forth hours later. 'This is challenging everything I've made so far in art,' he said.

'Is the anthropological more important than the exchange value of singular objects?

'This is a composite picture made up of pixels of one hour of people's lives. We're creating a community of interest. Who are we now? What is the UK now?'

Blimey. Rachel Wardell, 35, saw it in simpler terms. 'It was really very peaceful up there, very serene,' she said, after spending an hour holding up a sign promoting the NSPCC.

Some day your plinth will come: Close up it's rather high but there's a safety net during this event

She had volunteered for the project 'just because I liked the idea' and admitted to being 'terribly nervous' when she was informed that she was the first to take the plinth.

She was followed by Jason Clark, 41, a nurse from Brighton. Wearing a bright red T-shirt, he did nothing except wave at the odd passer-by and take a few photos. Who was he representing? 'No one really, except slightly receding 41-yearold blokes.'

He admitted that the greatest challenge had been overcoming his fear of heights. 'My legs were a bit wobbly for the first minutes, but then it was just about being up there. If you can weather the first five minutes, it's all right then.'

Among yesterday's other human sculptures was graduate Suren Seneviratne, 22, who dressed up as a panda and spent his hour on the telephone, and Steve Platt, 54, a former editor of the New Statesman, who hoped the occasion would be something for his grandson 'to remember' and spent his hour writing messages on a blackboard.

MANY of the future 'plinthers' have already indicated that they will use their hour to promote something. Yesterday's lunchtime slot was occupied by London bar owner Scott Illma, 34, who dressed up as a town cryer and spent the hour shouting about his bar.

'I could spend £5,000 for an advert, but I think this is better than that,' he said, adding that he had been a little upset by one heckler who called him 'boring'.

Antony Gormley admits that his project could become an advertising hoarding or a worthy series of charity appeals, but says that there is nothing he can do about it. 'It will get very boring if it is only demonstrating and message-making,' he says.

RELATED ARTICLES

Share this article

Art, eh? Tricky blighter. There is plenty of variety, though. Tomorrow morning, Newcastle student Jon Guest, 23, will dress up as a loo to promote WaterAid.

Shortly after midnight on Thursday, Melrose solicitor William Windram will spend an hour 'reading an early Penguin edition'.

Later on, Gwynneth Pedler, 83, from Oxford, will be lifted up in her wheelchair and plans to spend her allotted hour making semaphore signals with flags.

I suspect that Gormley is on to another winner - and he has not had to dirty his hands with a single lump of clay to make this sculpture.

All the same, I would not want to be standing up there 'making art' when the pubs empty on a Saturday night and the binge-drinkers are in the mood for a little late entertainment. 'Egging' David Blaine became a nightly ritual in 2003.

There is something reminiscent of the stocks and coconut shy about this exhibit (just as there is something of the tumbril about the cherry-picker waggon which brings the 'plinthers' to their platform).